[Peetwo]

Time to get international ICAO Annex 13 AAI back to Reason?   

(CAUTION: Long post following -   )

I note (with much bemusement, interest and quiet applause) that in the real world of aviation safety a cadre of SME's (subject matter experts), which include several very credible aviation MSM and social media commentators/journalists, are taking to task William Langewiesche’s much discussed NYT Magazine article - What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?   

First from Christine Negroni:  

Irony of Pilot Laying Blame On Pilots in Boeing 737 Max Disasters

September 21, 2019 / 3 Comments



Full disclosure, I own and have read nearly every book ever written by William Langewiesche. He is a gifted writer with a stunning intellect and this is just an aside, he’s quite the looker. I have interviewed him twice but with his latest article in The New York Times Magazine, I think my crush is over.

In a lengthy piece just published, Langewiesche weaves the known facts of the two 737 Max disasters into a jumble of opinion, pilot-bashing and Western superiority.

Ostensibly, he is informing Times readers that not all pilots are Chuck Yeager and to justify the headline of the article, when it comes to What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max,  “an industry that puts unprepared pilots in the cockpit is just as guilty,” as Boeing is the conclusion...



....Langewiesche argues that the media has zeroed in on Boeing because it’s simple and easy and obscured the larger forces that “ultimately made these accidents possible.” But out of 14-thousand words, few are dedicated to systems and processes that put a deeply flawed airplane in the hands of pilots around the world. Nor does he talk to any of the pilots who would fly the Max or regulators around the world who must sign off on its future airworthiness.

Langeweishe is a pilot, a storm chaser, and a writer. But the assumptions he makes in this article and similar pilot-bashing treatise a few months ago in The Atlantic where concludes on the thinnest of threads that Malaysia 370 was intentionally flown into the Indian Ocean by the captain indicate he’s out of his area of expertise when it comes to reporting on safety investigations.

He characterizes the pilots’ actions as incompetent, sloppy and dumb, and says investigators are looking for cause and blame. In the world of air safety, those words are never used because they have no relationship to the goal; discovering what happened and why.

For a more nuanced look at the issues, see the excellent coverage by Dominick Gates and others at the Seattle Times along with the reporters covering the story in the business pages of The New York Times, Natalie Kitroff, and David Gelles . If those writers are in possession of pilot’s licenses, they are at least unburdened by the need to convince the world they were in the top fifty percent of their class and not among the inferiors who brought down the Max.

(P2 comment: Refer to the blog link for the full article)

And from Elan Head in the Medium: 

The limits of William Langewiesche’s ‘airmanship’

Elan Head

Sep 23 · 6 min read



There are a lot of bold pronouncements and sweeping generalizations in William Langewiesche’s much discussed New York Times Magazine article, “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?” There is, for example, his contention that Boeing at the corporate level is a “corrosive agent” that “dangerously distorts American society.” But also his argument that in the case of the 737 Max, Boeing’s habit of, say, “toying with nuclear annihilation” doesn’t really matter, because the aircraft itself was designed by engineers of “unquestionable if bland integrity.” And finally his conclusion that the two 737 Max crashes — which killed a total of 346 people and which, by the way, are still under investigation — can be summed up simply as “a textbook failure of airmanship.”

Other pilots and aviation writers have already challenged most of these generalizations. The claim that stood out to me was Langewiesche’s breezy assurance that “airmanship” — an “anachronistic” word, he grants — “is applied without prejudice to women as well as men.” I am sure that Langewiesche sincerely believes this. But in an industry in which barely seven percent of pilots are women, it is doubtful that any standard, let alone one as essential yet subjective as airmanship, is applied to women wholly without prejudice.

Neither is it applied evenly to men. Aviation has historically favored a certain type of man, from a certain type of background — a type of man, coincidentally, who looks a lot like William Langewiesche. Men who don’t conform to this stereotype (men, for example, of non-European descent) have to work that much harder to prove themselves as pilots, just as women do. I mention this not only because Langewiesche’s broad indictments of pilots in developing countries are deeply problematic, but because his blindness to his own privilege reflects his generally archaic way of thinking. “What Really Brought Down the Boeing 737 Max?” is the last stand of an obstinate pilot who, resolutely ignoring both seven decades of human factors research and the questions raised by his own reporting, is determined to ascribe two complex tragedies to personal failings. It is an attitude that the rest of the aviation industry is, fortunately, starting to move beyond.

This is not to say that I take issue with Langewiesche’s definition of airmanship, fuzzy though it is. “Its full meaning is difficult to convey,” he writes. “It includes a visceral sense of navigation, an operational understanding of weather and weather information, the ability to form mental maps of traffic flows, fluency in the nuance of radio communications and, especially, a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia and wings.” My own expertise is with rotors, not wings, but yeah, that’s the general idea. And in my experience both as a primary flight instructor and as a chronicler of the industry — having had the opportunity to fly with some truly extraordinary pilots, all over the world — I can confirm that the essential qualities of airmanship can be found in male and female pilots of all races and nationalities, and equally not found in them, too.

But precisely because it is so fuzzy, the concept of “airmanship” is limited in its usefulness. A pilot who has a visceral sense of navigation and a deep appreciation for the interplay between energy, inertia and wings will not therefore automatically possess a nuanced understanding of complex aircraft systems — that’s what training is for. Training is partly a matter of initiative, but also a matter of opportunity. For example, it’s hard to understand something like the 737 Max’s Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System when the manufacturer does not mention that it exists, which Boeing initially did not.

Langewiesche contends that the training of pilots in Indonesia and other parts of the developing world is deficient at all levels: from the “production line” training of “checklist children” to the falsification of simulator time in type. These are not carefully documented claims, but assertions based on impressions and hearsay. Nevertheless, if true, they would seem to be systemic problems, calling for systemic solutions. Likewise for the other systemic problems that Langewiesche enumerates in his article: “the ossification of regulations and in many places their creeping irrelevance to operations; the corruption of government inspectors; the corruption of political leaders and the press; the pressure on mechanics, dispatchers and flight crews to keep unsafe airplanes in the air; the discouragement, fatigue and low wages of many airline employees; the willingness of bankers and insurers to underwrite bare-bones operations at whatever risk to the public; the cynicism of investors who insist on treating air travel as just another business opportunity; and finally the eagerness of the manufacturers to sell their airplanes to any airline without restraint.”

Yet Langewiesche does not, in the end, take a systemic view of the situation. Instead, after chastising the public for seeking a “simple answer” to the Max crashes in the narrative of “a poorly implemented system,” he finds his own simple answer in declaring that “incompetent” pilots were the deciding factor in both crashes. This intellectual leap — from acknowledging a host of potentially contributing factors to finally just straight up blaming the pilots — ought to be bewildering, but is instead all too familiar when viewed in historical context. Leveraging the pages of New York periodicals to shift blame onto pilots has been a thing since at least 1931, when Orville Wright contended in the New Yorker that aviation safety in that era of crude machinery and scanty infrastructure was simply “a matter of better pilot training.”

As the aviation writer Christine Negroni has pointed out, Langewiesche is at great pains in his article to emphasize his own, above-average airmanship, as when he lists all of the many equipment failures that he has personally survived. (Lest you wonder about the adequacy of his preflight inspections, rest assured that the blame for these failures adhered solely to his employers; his own role was strictly heroic.) Heroic airmanship is something that every pilot should aspire to for purely selfish reasons — it may someday save their life — but too many pilots have, like Langewiesche, allowed this professional ideal to obscure the need for practical improvements in aircraft design and flight training. As a test pilot quoted in the article flippantly remarks, “we know as a fact that half of airline pilots graduated in the bottom half of their class,” yet Langewiesche’s solution is essentially to hold every pilot to the standard of the top one percent.

When Langewiesche’s article was published, the New York Times Magazine editor Michael Benoist tweeted, “At one point while working on this story William Langewiesche told me something like, ‘I think my whole life and all of my experience went into this thing.’” No doubt it did — along with all of the conventional wisdom and entrenched prejudices of an industry that has traditionally valued the opinions of men like Langewiesche above those of everyone else. After all, why should Langewiesche have to bother with facts or context — with actual reporting — when he can rely on his own indisputable authority as an above-average pilot?

The good news is that Langewiesche’s views are increasingly being seen as outdated, as the blowback to his article in the aviation community suggests. Rather than relying on a particular heroic type of pilot to save us, we now see safety as a systemic endeavor, demanding systemic improvements. Pilot training is part of this system, but so, too, are aircraft design, certification and maintenance. And the merits of this approach are self-evident. Even if, as Langewiesche implies, pilots of an earlier era had superior stick-and-rudder skills, they still crashed airliners at a rate that would be unacceptable today. Perhaps Langewiesche’s heroic pilot ideal never actually existed. Perhaps, even back then, half of all airline pilots graduated in the bottom half of their class.

If nothing else perhaps the cognitive bias on display in the Langewiesche article brings forward the debate that IMO we need to have. Especially in the insular world of Oz aviation safety administration where it is beyond all 'Reason' and somehow acceptable for our accredited ICAO Annex 13 AAI (aviation accident investigator - ATSB) to be the chief proponent of the 'blame game', if and when it suits a bloated self-serving, self-preserving aviation safety bureaucracy...

The good news in all of this diplomatic and political argy bargy surrounding the 737 MAX imbroglio, is that the (previously mentored by Alan Stray ) Indonesian NTSC will stand by the long held AAI principles of Annex 13 and report their findings, (without fear nor favour; or cognitive bias; or bureaucratic O&O) within the next couple of months...

From the WSJ, via the Oz:

Indonesia blames design, oversight lapses for fatal 737 MAX crash



Indonesian investigators have determined that design and oversight lapses played a central role in the fatal crash of a Boeing 737 MAX jet in October, according to people familiar with what is expected to be the first formal government finding that the design and US regulatory approval were flawed.

The draft conclusions, these people said, also identify a string of pilot errors and maintenance mistakes as causal factors in the fatal plunge of the Boeing Co. plane into the Java Sea, echoing a preliminary report from Indonesia last year.

Misfires of an automated flight-control feature called MCAS on the MAX fleet led to the nosedive of the Lion Air jet and a similar crash of an Ethiopian Airlines MAX shortly after takeoff from Addis Ababa in March. The two crashes took 346 lives, prompted the grounding of all 737 MAX planes and disrupted the global aviation industry.

Details of the Indonesian report, which haven’t been reported previously, are subject to change and further analysis. Indonesian investigators declined to comment, except to say the final document is likely come out in early November.

A Boeing spokesman said the plane maker continues to work with Indonesian authorities as they complete the report.

US air-crash investigators are preparing to announce a handful of separate safety recommendations, ranging from bolstering the manual flying skills of pilots to enhancing FAA vetting of new aircraft designs.

The US National Transportation Safety Board is expected around the end of the month to call for improvements to cockpit training and crew decision making, according to industry and government officials.

The goal is to ensure pilot proficiency when automated systems are malfunctioning or turned off, to help ensure appropriate responses to contradictory cockpit warnings such as those that occurred prior to the MAX crashes, the officials said. The board also is expected to emphasise the importance of setting priorities when executing emergency checklists.

In addition, the NTSB is expected to focus on potential changes to certification of new airliners. The board is poised to recommend re-evaluation of FAA procedures that give the industry authority to sign off on certain safety matters, the officials said. The aim is to make such approvals more transparent, with the goal of greater predictability and more-consistent federal oversight across various types of on-board systems.

Neither the US nor Indonesian recommendations will be binding on the FAA, though the agency already faces escalating congressional and public pressure to change certification procedures. More than half a dozen outside inquiries, including a Justice Department criminal probe and various blue-ribbon advisory panels, are delving into the FAA’s 2017 approval of MCAS. Earlier this month, a Senate appropriations subcommittee backed legislation that would require FAA officials to address recommendations from ongoing investigations and audits.

The FAA has said it welcomes the independent reviews, will carefully consider their results and doesn’t have a firm timetable for allowing MAX jets back in the air. Boeing has said it is collaborating with US and foreign officials to safely return the MAX to service.

Steve Dickson, the FAA’s new head, and top lieutenants are scheduled to meet Monday in Montreal with some four dozen foreign regulators to provide a closed-door update on anticipated fixes to the MAX’s flight-control software and computers.

The FAA is urging a core group of regulators -- from Canada, Australia, Brazil and New Zealand -- to approve the fixes around November, which would be roughly in tandem with informal US timelines. FAA leaders also are trying to persuade aviation authorities in Europe and other regions to follow by lifting their grounding orders shortly afterwards, according to US government and industry officials familiar with the deliberations.

But such co-ordination efforts are running into significant hurdles. Canadian aviation regulators have signalled to the FAA that they expect to require pilots to undergo simulator training before they can start flying the MAX, something the FAA is unlikely to mandate. It could take until March for Air Canada to phase the bulk of its MAX aircraft into regular schedules, according to a person briefed on the details, months later than projected for US operators.

In Europe, regulators previously said they won’t accept the FAA’s technical verifications of fixes and intend to perform their own certification analyses, possibly adding weeks or months to the timetable.

Meanwhile, FAA officials in recent weeks said that Boeing hasn’t provided all of the requested details laying out the description and safety assessments of the MAX’s redesigned flight-control system.

The latest version of Indonesia’s accident report has been shared with the FAA and NTSB for comment. US officials are expected to visit Indonesia around the end of this month to finalise the document. People familiar with the process said NTSB experts don’t appear to have major disagreements with the draft. Boeing and the FAA, on the other hand, are concerned the final report will unduly emphasise design and FAA certification missteps, some of these people said.

Unlike NTSB reports that identify the primary cause of accidents and then list contributing issues determined to be less significant, Indonesia is following a convention used by many foreign regulators of listing causal factors without ranking them. Instead, the report is expected to list more than 100 elements of the crash chronology, according to a person briefed on the details. Many of those points are likely to refer to missteps by pilots and mechanics initially revealed last year in Indonesia’s preliminary report.

Indonesian authorities now are asking for comments on the draft conclusions dealing with those missteps, as well as findings that investigators have determined constitute engineering shortcomings, including reliance on a sole sensor in the original design of MCAS, according to people familiar with the matter.

  MTF...P2